NEWS

KRAEMER ‘Baroque Maestro’

“Chicago’s Harris Theater was packed with music lovers especially the beautiful woman who deigned to attend last night’s performance with me. The diminutive angel with whom I am allowed to visit my better instincts is a gifted Alto choral director and singer and has performed with most of Chicago’s Baroque Chorus and Orchestra – Soprano’s Laura Amend and Maire O’Brien, and a Bass named Hoss. One of the soloists was Alto Nina Heebink who doubled as a mezzo soprano.

I knew Conductor Nicholas Kraemer as I had watched his athleticism and buoyant grace charge the atmosphere at Chicago’s Symphony Center two years ago. With the body of a wrestler or a gymnast, Kraemer brings full-contact grace to music. More importantly, the man is intelligent, witty, gracious and warm.

Last night, Maestro Kraemer performed a Lazarusian miracle on Cantatta: “Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft” by George Phillip Telemann which had only been performed once since its composition in 1726. Telemann, Maestro Kraemer told us, wrote more than 1,000 Cantatas. The score for the text was found in Belgium.

Baroque music is from the age when Fredrick the Great was bullying Europe and Marlborough was slaughtering Frenchman at Blenheim – when the House of Hanover (Windsor) were still working on their resumes to get England to replace poor old Queen Anne. Baroque is ornate, intricate, diverse and humorous – combining peasant motiffs with court hubris. Bach, Tellemann, Hayden and the lads knew that the world was Vanity itself and that all things must look back to God and maybe people would eventually shake off some of their nonsense.”